


I Used to Put My Ear Against the Wall, to Hear the Screams, to Hear the Fall (More Reasons to Escape It All)

by Huntress8611



Series: Whumptober 2020 [15]
Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: (mentioned in relation to the Nazis), Day 15, Experimentation, Guns, Human Experimentation, Hurt, Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani Whump, M/M, Medical Experimentation, Medical Torture, Nazis, Pain, Pre-Canon, Pre-Movie: The Old Guard (2020), Racism, Temporary Character Death, Torture, Unethical Experimentation, Whump, Whumptober, Whumptober 2020, World War II, lmk if there's anything that I should have tagged but didn't, science gone wrong
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-15
Updated: 2020-10-15
Packaged: 2021-03-09 04:00:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,438
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27038368
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Huntress8611/pseuds/Huntress8611
Summary: “This one is wrong. He died, and yet he is not dead.”“That is not possible, you must be losing it,” the new person said.“No, look.”Yusuf groaned as he felt someone stab a knife into his arm.“Shit,” he muttered.“Oh. Oh, my,” the man said softly. “Yes, this is most interesting.”
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Series: Whumptober 2020 [15]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1946887
Kudos: 35
Collections: Whumptober 2020





	I Used to Put My Ear Against the Wall, to Hear the Screams, to Hear the Fall (More Reasons to Escape It All)

**Author's Note:**

> The title of this work is from the song Devils Don't Fly by Natalia Kills.
> 
> This work fills the prompt for Whumptober Day 15: Science Gone Wrong
> 
> TWs: World War II, Nazis, medical experimentation, medical torture, temporary character death, racism (mentioned in regards to the Nazis), guns  
> (please, PLEASE let me know if I missed anything)
> 
> I may or may not have been thinking about the first Captain America movie while I wrote this. (The thought was: what if I did a thing where it was vaguely based off of the first Captain America movie? Like, not an AU, but during that era. Maybe some organization on the Axis side of the war captures them, realizes that they can’t die, and experiments on them because they think it's some new thing the Allies figured out and they wanna know what it is.)

“Ugh,” Nicolo groaned, clutching at his forehead. “What the hell-”

He looked around and swore.

“Yusuf,” he hissed, poking the other man. “Joe, wake up!”

“Gimme, like, 5 more minutes, Nicolo,” he muttered, not even opening his eyes.

“Joe, wake up, look around!”

Yusuf finally opened his eyes at the urgent tone of Nicolo’s words, and then he swore too.

“Where are we?” Yusuf asked. “How far do you think they took us?”

“Not too far, it’s still light outside,” Nicolo guessed, looking out of the cell they’d been thrown into.

“Damnit, I knew there was a reason I had a bad feeling about that pl-” he stopped at the sound of footsteps.

“Nicolo, listen to me,” he whispered urgently. “Make it clear you’re Italian. They’ll leave you alone, maybe.”

Nicolo’s eyes widened in understanding. He had been, and still was, utterly horrified when he had learned what side of the war Italy was fighting on, but now he might be able to use it to his advantage. Except...

“They’ll target you, though.”

“Yeah, well, we’re never getting out of here if they realize  _ both _ of us heal really quick and come back to life.”

“Keep your head down, Joe. Don’t draw attention to yourself, and I’ll do that. I won’t pretend to not be on your side, but I won’t antagonize them.”

“Okay,” Yusuf said, knowing it was the best he would get.

Two German soldiers stopped in front of their door, and seemed surprised that they were awake.

“What do you want from us?” Nicolo asked.

Yusuf kept quiet, doing his best not to draw attention to himself.

“Information.”

“Good luck with that,” Nicolo said, and Yusuf couldn’t help but let out a small laugh, which unfortunately did, in fact, draw attention to himself.

“We were not talking to you,” one of the soldiers said angrily, his hand on his gun.

Nicolo looked at him, worried for his safety much more than he worried for his own. Though both of them were in danger because they were Allied soldiers, Yusuf was someone they’d believe to be inferior to them, because he was not white. Nicolo, on the other hand, looked and sounded as if he was from Italy, which was an ally to Germany. They were much less likely to go after him.

Nicolo couldn’t tell you what happened next, because it all happened so quickly. The two men said something to each other in German, having a conversation that was too quiet to hear, and then the one on the left laughed and drew his gun, shooting Joe before Nicolo even had the chance to blink.

Nicolo was shocked. He hadn’t expected them to immediately shoot Yusuf in the head. And they definitely weren’t expecting Yusuf to come back to life right in front of their eyes.

Nicolo quickly scrambled over to him and grabbed his shoulders. Yusuf came back to life with a gasp.

“Yusuf,” he said quietly in Arabic, correctly assuming that the Nazi’s wouldn’t understand that language. “Yusuf, you’re okay.”

Nicolo heard them unlock the cell door, and then they took Yusuf. He tried to hold on, but there were two of them and only one of him. He and Yusuf had both been chained to the wall, and Nicolo had only just been able to reach him, so they were easily able to pull him out of his reach.

“No, no, Yusuf!” he shouted as they dragged him out of the cell, leaving him there on his own.

Fuck, this was bad. Yusuf opened his eyes, trying to keep track of where they were dragging him, but he was dizzy and had to close them again.

They stopped and spoke to someone in German, saying, “This one is wrong. He died, and yet he is not dead.”

“That is not possible, you must be losing it,” the new person said.

“No, look.”

Yusuf groaned as he felt someone stab a knife into his arm.

“Shit,” he muttered.

“Oh. Oh, my,” the man said softly. “Yes, this is most interesting.”

Oh boy, here we go, Joe thought when he opened his eyes to see a laboratory of some kind and a man in a doctor’s coat. This was not going to be fun. He hoped the others found them soon…

\---------------

Andy and Sebastien were worried. They had seen the Nazi’s take Yusuf and Nicolo, but hadn’t found them yet. They’d had to slip away from the soldiers they’d been tagging along with, and they didn’t have a car or anything to use to get to them faster.

Andy practically ran through the underbrush, somehow making almost no noise, while Sebastien tried and failed to do the same. She was following the tire tracks of the vehicle that had driven away, that had most likely taken Yusuf and Nicolo.

When she saw something through the trees, she stopped.

“We have to be silent,” she whispered. “We will go slowly, you’re still too loud to go fast.”

Sebastien considered being offended, but now was not the time. Also, she wasn’t wrong, he was loud. To be fair, she’d been alive for thousands of years, and he’d not even lived through 200 yet.

They moved quietly to the edge of the trees, finding themselves standing just outside of a German base.

“This must be where they are,” Andy said.

\--------------

Yusuf came back to life yet again, and screamed. The doctor was leaning over him again, looking at him like he was a lab rat, an interesting specimen for him to study. He could feel a knife slicing of a chunk of his arm, and he futilely yanked at the restraints.

In the beginning, he’d hoped that they would take what they wanted and leave him be, but that wasn’t what happened. This doctor didn’t seem interested in only science, but also in tormenting him, seeing what could cause the most pain.

The scientist, Yusuf decided then and there to stop calling the man a doctor, also used him as a glorified lab rat. Once he’d figured out that Yusuf couldn’t die, he started experimenting. He rambled on about experimental drugs and weapons, and Yusuf tried to tune him out, and avoid focusing on the pain.

\---------------

“Nicky!”

“Andy,” he said, scrambling to his feet.

“Sorry for taking so long, we had to figure out how to get past the guards,” Andy explained. “We couldn’t risk getting caught.”

“Andy, they took Joe, they know he can’t die!”

Sebsatien kept a lookout for any guards while Andy opened the doors and unlocked the chains keeping him where he was.

“Do you know where they took him?” she asked.

“I assume that way,” he said, pointing to the left. “It’s where the scream-'' as if on cue, there was a scream from someone far away, “-the screams are coming from.”

Andy nodded, passing him his sword before they started off towards the screams.

The Nazi’s had left Nicolo and Yusuf’s swords, for some reason, so Andy had picked them up, knowing they were important to the men.

It took all of Nicolo’s self control to not run towards the screams. Andy led them through the base, and they avoided all of the guards, up until they reached a room with two Nazi’s guarding the door.

“Those are the ones that took him,” he whispered to the others.

Andy nodded, and they got started.

Within a few minutes, they’d restrained and killed the men guarding the room and burst inside.

There was a person leaning over someone strapped to a table.  _ Yusuf. _

The scientist froze.

“What the hell-”

“Let. Him. Go.”

“No! Why would I do that? Do you not understand how big this is? What could this discovery mean? This man-”

He was forcibly cut off by Andy, who’d decided she’d had enough and decapitated him with her axe.

Nicolo rushed over to Yusuf, quickly removing the restraints and pulling him into a quick hug.

“We have to go,” Andy said. “C’mon.”

Nicolo put his shoulder under one of Yusuf’s arms, supporting him, and Sebastien did the same on his other side.

They quickly moved through the base, somehow managing to get out without being spotted. Andy led them into the woods, making sure they were far away from the base before she allowed them to stop.

Nicolo and Sebastien lowered Yusuf to the ground, the former sitting next to him and pulling him against him.

“Yusuf,” he whispered. “Are you okay?”

“I am,” he said quietly.

“Good,” Nicolo said. “I was worried.”

“Thank you for coming for us,” Yusuf said, looking up at the others.

“Of course, always.”


End file.
